Chaguito was right. In La Concordia the Cazadores de la Patria tracked down citizens who wanted to overthrow the government and, once they had caught them, sliced off their ears, cut off their eyelids, or drove splinters under their nails until they confessed. And once they had confessed, they were shot.
La Concordia was unabashedly commercial. There were thriving businesses on every corner and only one or two churches in sight. Concordians were entrepreneurs; in his brief stroll through the city Chaguito noted four factories: crackers, noodles, and Panama hats were all made in La Concordia, and tobacco was grown nearby. Next, he wanted to find out how many foundries there were in town. He stopped at a street corner, closed his eyes, and sniffed around like a dog. He was an engineer’s son and he had iron in his blood; he could recognize the smell of liquid ore a mile away. Immediately he knew there were two in town, and he walked off in their direction. They were old-fashioned enterprises. One was owned by a Scotsman, Mr. McCann, who didn’t want to spend any money modernizing his kilns, and the other by a Spaniard, Don Miguel Sáez Peña, who had made thousands of dollars building steam engines, conical wheels, crowns, and rollers for the sugarcane mills. But Chaguito saw that Don Miguel’s foundry had an outdated steam boiler that was very run-down. Not surprisingly, it exploded a few months after he arrived in town.
Concordians were a practical, down-to-earth people who liked to call things as they saw them. The street the hospital was on was Calle Salud; the school stood on Calle Educación; the butcher’s street was Calle Matadero. But the streets Chaguito liked best were Calle Armonía, Calle Hermandad, and Calle Fraternidad, representing the Masonic virtues.
Under Spanish law Freemasonry was strictly forbidden; membership in a Masonic lodge was punishable by death. But in La Concordia, Freemasons were all over the place, and Roque soon got in touch with them. He had served as grand master at the clandestine Masonic temple in Santiago de Cuba and he still had some influence in the fraternity. So the first thing he did after he arrived was to visit the Aurora Lodge, which was located in a ruined sugar warehouse on the outskirts of town, and ask that his nephew be accepted as a member. Chaguito was initiated soon after, and since all Masons were members of La Concordia’s Firemen’s Corps, he became a fireman as well.
The earliest photograph I’ve ever seen of Abuelo Chaguito was taken in 1900, four years after he arrived in Puerto Rico. He’s sitting on a bench with twelve other firemen, and he’s wearing the firemen’s dress uniform: a red-visored cap, a high-collared navy-blue jacket with gold trim at the neck, and a bronze saber at the waist. At five feet four, he was the shortest one of all—and his slight frame made his whiskers seem that much larger. At the bottom of the photograph someone had written in ink: “Fosforito Vernet—Little Matchstick Vernet—who loved starting fires as much as putting them out.”
Precisely because they were so proud of their town, La Concordia’s merchants had invested heavily in its fire brigade. The firemen had the latest equipment: horse-drawn engines, water pumps and hoses, tanks, axes, and ladders. La Concordia sat on a wide valley planted with sugarcane that was periodically set ablaze to facilitate harvesting. Hence the city often fell victim to fires sparked by flying embers of cane that landed on the roofs of the wood-frame houses of the poorer residents on the outskirts of town.
Two years after Abuelo Chaguito arrived in La Concordia, a tremendous fire broke out in the Plaza del Mercado Isabel Segunda. Since the wind was blowing from the south, the fire soon spread north toward the military powder magazine. The American army that had come with General Nelson A. Miles was stationed at La Concordia, and Colonel Hulings, the officer in charge, ordered everyone to evacuate. The fire seemed sure to reach the munitions depot and blow the town to pieces.
Chaguito was a lieutenant in the fire brigade and he disregarded the colonel’s order. He drove his truck to where the fire was raging, and he and his men put it out. The next day the firemen were hailed as heroes by the citizens of La Concordia. But the army brought civil charges against them for disobeying military orders and the firemen were all put in jail. A large group of prominent men went to visit the American commandant and convinced him that what the firemen had done was heroic. La Concordia was as much a work of art as Paris, they said, only on a smaller scale, and saving it from destruction had been an act of humanity. The next day Colonel Hulings set Chaguito and the other firemen free.
The job of building the new evaporator at the Siboney had taken Roque and Chaguito two years, and when it was finished, Don Eustaquio Ridruejo, the mill’s owner, commissioned them to install a new copper still for his rum distillery. But Roque wanted to return to Cuba. “The war is over now, sir. It’s time to go home,” he told Don Eustaquio.
“Your mother is waiting for us, lad,” Roque told Chaguito. “She has no one in the world but us.”
“You go on ahead, Tío,” Chaguito said coolly. “I want to stay on at La Concordia for a few months. I’ll install Don Eustaquio’s copper still for him.”
Tío Roque thought Chaguito was still angry at his mother because of the way she had had him put aboard the Alicia Contreras. So he carried his bags to the harbor himself and boarded the sloop that would take him back to Cuba.
But Tío Roque was wrong. Abuelo Chaguito wanted to remain on the island for other reasons. After the Maine had blown up in Havana’s harbor, rumors had begun to fly around La Concordia that the United States was planning to invade Puerto Rico. Chaguito wasn’t about to leave the island when things were just heating up. He had heard that President William McKinley’s advisers at the Department of State had toyed with the idea of keeping Cuba after they invaded it—there were plenty of Cubans like Narciso López, who had wanted to annex the island to the United States in 1850—but it was too dangerous to attempt. Cuba was a rich and beautiful island, the largest of the Greater Antilles, but the mermaid might turn crocodile at any moment. It was much safer to take over Puerto Rico, the minnow to the south.
A month after the American invasion was over, Abuelo Chaguito wrote a letter to his mother in Santiago de Cuba. Bisabuela Elvira always kept it by her, and when she died not long after, Tío Roque mailed it back to Chaguito in Puerto Rico. It has been in the Vernet family for a hundred years. Aurelio kept it in his desk and showed an almost religious reverence for it.
November 25, 1898
Dear Mother:
I have received your letter and beg you not to worry, because I’m well and in good health. Things have calmed down a lot here, and people have taken up their usual routines of working, eating, and sleeping, even though now we have a very different flag in front of the alcaldía and the post office.
I am working very hard for different haciendas near La Concordia, but this work is not new to me. You know how I struggled to learn to be a mechanic in several sugarcane centrales in Cuba when I was a mere boy of fourteen, and for a few months I even worked in a phosphate mine, where I carried ten-pound salt bags on my back to the cane fields that needed fertilizing. Even so, I wouldn’t have left my country if it hadn’t been for the dirty trick you played on me.
I want you to know that on this island, which is poor and meager in size compared with our beautiful Cuba, I’ve learned a lesson I never understood while I was living at home: the need to respect other people’s right to live as they wish. Even you, Mother, became influenced by General Valeriano Weyler’s despotic methods when you had me put aboard the Alicia Contreras in the shameful way you did.
Since the Americans landed here, I have become an admirer of the United States. Religious tolerance and political compromise are the virtues that make democracy possible. Only by following the example of the United States will Cuba be able to rid itself of absolutism and Catholicism—the two millstones inherited from Spain that hang around its neck.
I suppose the Americans’ arrival in Puerto Rico has been in all the Cuban newspapers, but I thought I’d give you a firsthand account of what happened. As a member of an elite Firemen’s Corps in
La Concordia, I had the opportunity to take a distinguished part in the invasion, and you can be proud of the way I behaved myself.
It was an odd situation. Americans are candid in matters of war. The place where they would land was supposed to be a secret, but everybody knew it in advance. The date, time, and place had been published in all the local newspapers, and housewives all over the island had cleaned out the grocery stores as if a hurricane were approaching. General Nelson A. Miles’s fleet was expected to land in Fajardo, on the eastern coast, on the twenty-first of July. But when he got there, three regiments of Spanish troops were waiting for him, armed to the teeth. General Miles looks like an old walrus. I had the chance to meet him personally when he delivered a speech in La Concordia’s Plaza de las Delicias right after he disembarked. He has white whiskers pouring down his cheeks and is large-jowled and hefty. But he’s also a seasoned Indian fighter. A few years before he set sail for Puerto Rico, he defeated Crazy Horse, the Sioux chief who overwhelmed General Custer at Little Big Horn. So when he arrived at Fajardo and saw the warm reception awaiting him, he turned right around and sailed far out to sea again.
“If we could outfox the Sioux in Montana,” Miles told one of his aides and later bragged to a reporter a few days after the invasion, “we can outfox the Spaniards in Puerto Rico and win the support of the peaceful natives along the way.” Miles’s four battleships—the Massachusetts, the Yale, the Dixie, and the Gloucester—as well as ten transport ships carrying 3,415 men, sailed north, as far away from the coast of Puerto Rico as possible, rounded Mona Passage in the night, all lights out, and landed at Guánica, a secluded bay on the Caribbean coast, at 5:20 on the morning of July 25. He wasn’t expected at all there. Upon landing, he made a declaration to the people of Puerto Rico that was posted on fences all along the roads, on public buildings, and on school walls: “We have come not to wage war against the people of a country that has been oppressed for centuries but, on the contrary, to bring our protection to your citizens, as well as to your property.”
Guayamés, Sabana Verde, Hicacos—all the western towns—surrendered peacefully to General Miles. Bands played in the streets, women threw flowers to the soldiers from balconies, the hated Spanish flag was burned in the town squares. The Spaniards, greatly outnumbered, began a hasty retreat across the mountains toward San Juan. Miles’s fleet sailed victorious from Guánica to La Concordia, hugging the southern coast, and anchored in the bay. Then the ships, led by Commander Davis, aimed their cannons at the city.
Soon a United States army lieutenant bearing a white flag came galloping down the road from the harbor with an ultimatum from General Miles. If the Spanish troops didn’t surrender, the city would be razed to the ground, Lieutenant Meriam said. But General San Martín, who was in charge of the garrison in La Concordia, said that military regulations prevented his accepting the ultimatum and that it was up to General Macías, the captain general of the island in San Juan, to accept it. The lieutenant then gave the town half an hour to answer before the cannons began to bombard the city.
We were all horrified! The message would have to be relayed to General Macías by telegram; nothing could be done in half an hour. You should have seen the chaos that ensued. Everybody ran here and there all over town, throwing their possessions into mule carts and trying to save whatever was portable. People began to leave the city by the hundreds, heading out toward the hills behind the town.
My firemen friends and I put on our helmets and joined a commission of foreign consuls and other respectable citizens, and we all rode together out to the harbor to try to negotiate a surrender. An hour had gone by already and the Dixie, the Annapolis, and the Wasp still hadn’t fired their cannons at us. We talked to Lieutenant Meriam, a seasoned, stocky soldier who was still awaiting instructions, and asked him to relay our message to Commander Davis. We needed at least twenty-four hours to get an answer from General Macías in San Juan.
At ten o’clock that night the message finally came through, and General Macías ordered General San Martín to surrender. We put on our firemen’s helmets again and drove our fire engine all the way to the Spanish encampment. As the city’s private civil corps, firemen were allowed into the army encampments without problems. Instead of a water hose, however, we took out a flamethrower when we arrived. We stood there for several hours making sure the Regimiento de Cazadores de la Patria followed San Martín’s orders and left the city. All through the night we had to make sure no riots broke out, and on several occasions we prevented the citizens from throwing stones and broken bottles at the retreating troops, so great was the hatred of Concordians for the Spaniards.
General Miles’s army entered La Concordia peacefully at ten o’clock in the morning, dressed in heavy black-and-blue wool uniforms and sweating copiously under the blazing sun. They marched up to the alcaldía to the strains of the “Star-Spangled Banner,” which soon turned into “There’ll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight.” The Hunters of the Fatherland had had a good military band, and when they retreated to the mountains, they left behind a magnificent set of musical instruments—tubas, drums, French horns, saxophones, cymbals. When the American soldiers saw them, they picked them up and began to play in the middle of the plaza. Everybody began to dance.
I love you, Mother, but I’m not returning to Cuba. I’ve become an American, a free man. Also, I’m a Freemason now. I’m no longer a Catholic. Down with Spain! Down with the Catholic religion! Down with despotism! Long live the United States of America! Soon I’ll have enough money to send you a steamer ticket so you can join me here. The Vernets’ good-luck star is finally on the rise.
Your loving son,
Santiago
TWENTY-FOUR
The Lottery Vendor’s Daughter
LA CONCORDIA HAD A small electric plant, which supplied electricity to a few private businesses. The streets were illuminated with gas lamps; people cooked on charcoal stoves. When the Americans arrived, Stone and Webster of Boston was contracted by the U.S. government to wire the entire town. The firm’s engineers built a large plant. Dozens of pine logs were shipped to the island from Montana, tarred from end to end like licorice sticks, and set up at every street corner. One morning Abuelo Chaguito saw the Americans setting up a log at the corner of Calle Fraternidad.
“You seem to have your hands full. Do you need help with the electrical part of the job?” Abuelo Chaguito asked one of the engineers from Boston.
“Do you know what the word electricity means, son?” the engineers asked, scoffing at him good-naturedly.
“Electricity is a force measured in volts, due to the presence and movement of electrons. It produces various physical phenomena, like attraction and repulsion, light and heating, or shock to the body. At least that’s what the manuals say. But nobody really knows what electricity is,” Chaguito said, leaning against a nearby fence.
“Who taught you that?” one of the Stone and Webster engineers asked in amazement.
“My father did,” Chaguito answered. “And he also taught me the meaning of electromagnet, electrotype, and electrode. But he never told me what electrocution was, which was a pity because if he had, I might have been able to help him and he might still be alive.”
“Your father was an electrician?” the man asked, wondering at Abuelo Chaguito’s strange remark.
“He was an electrical engineer, sir, just like you. Electricity was his great love,” Abuelo Chaguito answered. “Unfortunately, he’s dead.”
“Well, see if you can fix this piece of junk,” the man said as he kicked a broken-down generator that was lying on the ground. Chaguito squatted and looked at it. “All you need is a new conductor coil; this one is all rusted. If you wait a minute, I’ll run to the junkyard and get one.”
“Bring it over tomorrow. And if you want to work for us, you’re hired,” the engineer from Boston said.
Chaguito went back the next day. He had an incredible ability with all things mechanical and could fix practical
ly any type of motor. He was also very agile and, with spikes strapped to his heels, climbed the wooden lampposts to wire them for electrical power, a leather belt holding him to the post by the waist. The engineers from Boston were very pleased and invited him to come stay with them in the military camp outside La Concordia where all the government people lived.
And so Chaguito began to work for the Stone and Webster Electric Company and saved every penny he could. Someday he planned to open his own foundry.
One morning he was wiring a lamppost in front of an elementary school in Barrio Tibes when he saw a curious sign over its door: “The Good Luck School.” An old man dressed in a faded black jacket and pants sat on the school’s front stoop. He was obviously blind: his eyes were clouded as if someone had spilled boiled egg white in them. He kept tapping the ground with his cane to the rhythm of the multiplication tables the schoolboys were reciting inside. Chaguito could hear them perfectly through the school’s open windows. The blind man held a sheet of lottery tickets in his lap, and when someone walked by he cried, “One thousand dollars for a quarter! Ten thousand for a dollar! This may be your last chance to buy a ticket to paradise!”
Chaguito thought it was an unlikely place for a lottery vendor to conduct his business, but he gave the old man a dollar and bought a ticket, number 202. Now the schoolboys were repeating the alphabet and he craned his neck to look in through the window. The schoolteacher was an imposing figure. She was six feet tall and her chest was as wide as an ocean liner. Dressed in a white blouse and a long madras skirt, she wore thick-heeled, no-nonsense shoes. Her hair was carefully combed into a starched bun.
Eccentric Neighborhood Page 16